Beaumont Newhall was an art historian and curator who was important in cultivating photography as an art form. He made an observation in a Smithsonian Oral History interview which has to be thrown into the pot for consideration:
"art is not a part-time thing, a person cannot work on a production line and come home and paint in the evening or on the weekends. True, there have been Sunday painters, but these are by far the minority and in my opinion one out of a thousand of the hobby painters who happens to have that spark and that sense of imagination which leads him to produce works of lasting quality."
Art is a material thing. The artist operates in the material world. The financials of art must be examined along side the aesthetics. Can a person be an artist without having a sinecure from the family? The assertion is that Art has a societal value, hence is worthy of tax payer support. The counter argument is that art is primarily about the color of the furniture and should be funded strictly by the marketplace. We will cloud this simple dichotomy as our argument takes shape. Public subsidy does not guarantee great art.
